COMICS CULTURE SHRAPNEL from CBEM 382

Right to Left

I always feel the need to proclaim my continued existence after I miss a few columns. Especially since I rarely send or receive mail (except those viruses that claim to come from Augie of Pipeline fame - I'd hate to think what kind of mess this virus made of his system). And I've had no good reason to miss columns, I've just been forgetful.

So anyway, I guess I'll actually do something of a review this week.

Tokyopop started licensing and releasing manga some time ago - six months, maybe more. December might be a good estimate. But the program is in full-swing, and I'd say it's going well. I've bought a bunch of volumes in the past week or so, devoured them in my spare time. And I am extremely pleased.

Most of the manga claim to be "100% Authentic," which means none of the names have been changed (not that there's any reason, though they did it with Initial D, and I don't want to get into that), the stories are printed in their entirety, and none of the artwork has been altered. That of course means, that it reads right to left.

Now, I've stated in the past how much I dislike this. Something is written in English but reads right to left, generally doesn't work. You're constantly switching directions, reading one word bubble then changing direction to look at the art and the next bubble. It can be disorientating.

I understand that not flipping the artwork keeps it true to the original vision - though titles like Blade of the Immortal stay true and yet conform to Western reading conventions by playing cut-and-paste with the panels. And I appreciate the gesture, and am willing to pay the extra cash.

It is for monetary reasons that I tolerate Tokyopop's decision to print right-to-left. Some companies print manga-style but still charge a fortune (the Dragonball volumes are a good example IMO). Tokyopop volumes are $10 a pop and they admit that the cost is partly due to not needing to alter the artwork in any way. So I simply got used to reading my books a different way.

Now, as for the books themselves...

I like the books as objects in general - the size is pretty nifty and fits on my shelf nicely. The paper is cheap but not the nasty kind, just a little rough which actually makes them better to turn, or just flip through the pages. It also prints cleanly - the black lines stand out sharply on the stark white paper and the artwork just simply jumps off the paper. It's really quite stunning, especially in the volumes of Chobits that I bought.

The covers are card-stock, and the design is quite pleasing. All of the books now use a standard border with the Tokyopop logo on it, which I suppose makes them easy to identify. The artwork isn't anything spectacular, but that's not a problem because they always seem to be representative of the artwork inside. So you're never disappointed.

The content is pretty good - I didn't mean to say that it was ever bad, just that this isn't a case of the cover artwork being too nice compared to the interior. They've picked some good stuff to translate. I have Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Cowboy Bebop. I'm a little biased on the latter two because I like the anime, but I really liked the manga anyway. I love Chobits, the writing and artwork are some of the best I've seen from CLAMP thus far. And they've taken care to actually make use of page space and panels - there's fewer white space or odd emotional juxtapositions in what I've read so far.

I'm glad that someone took the initiative to start releasing more manga in America - especially with the increase in anime now seen on TV and available for sale at the video store. It paints a better picture of Japanese culture, as well as increasing the possibility of respect for our own comics industry. It's a sharp increase in variety, displaying a wider comics spectrum. And it might raise the question - if the Japanese accept the medium, why can't we?